Aaron Lewis talks about upcoming benefit concert in Springfield

Aaron Lewis isn’t sure why he hasn’t played more shows in Springfield, the home-base for the multiplatinum band Staind that he has fronted for more than two decades

“I honestly don’t know,” said Lewis, who will headline a benefit concert at the MassMutual Center in Springfield on Friday. “Maybe it’s because we played so much there when we starting out. Maybe it was because we were booked so often in Hartford and Worcester that it was deemed ‘close enough.’ It certainly wasn’t by design.”

Lewis is bringing the annual “It Takes A Community” benefit concert to the MassMutual Center’s Exhibition Hall. The concert is moving down from Northampton’s Look Park.

“We are just trying something different,” Lewis said. “We had some rain issues at the last one and that left us a little shell-shocked. We figured if we moved it indoors it would be unaffected by the weather.”

Moving it south also gives Lewis an opportunity to perform in Springfield.

“That’s going to be pretty awesome,” he said. “I have the opportunity to play in a building where I saw so many concerts as a kid.”

Dubbed the “Aaron Lewis and Friends” concert, the benefit gives financial support to an organization Lewis has set up with his wife, Vanessa, to support rural communities in New England. The pair began the charity as part of their fight to reopen the former R.H. Conwell School in Worthington.

While the Lewis’ charitable efforts still support the school, the foundation has expanded its scope to encompass a greater vision that the singer hopes to support.

According to its mission statement, ITACF was created to help revive rural communities across New England by providing assistance that strengthens, enriches and preserves local towns. The foundation support initiatives that improve community life, particularly the lives of children, within rural areas. The group shares its expertise and provides financial assistance to empower citizens and local organizations to take charge of their own community’s future. Finally, ITACF works to unite resources and ideas to help people and communities create a better tomorrow.

“I think that the people of rural communities are the salt of the earth,” he said. “Rural communities are a very important part of this country and they are woefully underfunded.

Lewis points to his own community as an example.

“With 1,200 people, how much tax revenue can you get to be able to do everything that needs to be done?” he asked. “The police department barely exists, the fire department is totally volunteer and there is hardly enough money in the till to keep these departments functional, never mind trying to fund improvements.”
As if those goals aren’t daunting enough, there is still the financial strain of m
aintaining the R.H. Conwell Education Center, the project that originally set the Lewis’ on this philanthropic path.

“We are still working on it,” Lewis said. “We are looking for the perfect blueprint, the model that we can sustain and bring to other communities. I don’t think the answer is to stack kids on top of each other in class rooms.”

That particular model goes against everything that Lewis loves about being a member of a rural community.

“With big class rooms and long bus rides, you lose that sense of community,” he said. “There is value in parents seeing each other twice a day, when we drop off our kids and pick them up. There is value in the fact that we know all the kids by name.”

For Lewis, it is that organic social network that trumps anything you can find online.

“Yeah ... social media is such a contradiction, isn’t it?” he said. “Computers have made our world smaller, but so much more distant.”

While the foundation’s recent benefit shows have featured “friends” from Lewis’ hard rock circles, artists like Brad Arnold of 3 Doors Down, this event will include invitees from the country milieu.

“We have Craig Morgan and Jerrod Niemann,” Lewis said. “And we have a couple other surprises in store that I am not ready to confirm yet. It’s going to be a fun night. We may just go up on stage and do an old fashioned guitar pull.”

While country music seems to have his ear at the moment, Lewis doesn’t feel any particular pull between the two genres.

“It’s a different way to express myself,” he said. “If you took the songs I wrote or was responsible for bringing to the band, songs like ‘Zoe Jane,’ ‘Outside’, ‘Tangled Up in You,’ if you stripped them down and put side by side with my country songs, there is some cohesiveness there. It doesn’t seem that far outside my box.”

Similarly, both Staind and Lewis’ country persona enjoy a bit of an anti-establishment reputation.

“They both sort of go against the grain,” said Lewis.

Philanthropy is not easy, even for those who may have done well in their chosen field. Lewis realizes that his charitable achievements are really the result of a concerted team effort, and not merely the by-product of his celebrity.

“It has been a very expensive three years,” he notes. “I need everyone’s help. It can’t be done with just a golf tournament and benefit concert.”

For more information on Lewis' It Takes A Community Foundation, visititacf.org